White strings on Loach Fins!

[KlcoKN]

Oh I'm mrt555's gf btw lol, in case there was any confusion.
And I think I've spotted fin rot on a couple of my female guppies, will the kordon's Ich attack help treat that? Is the high temperature good or making it worse?

 

[Mumma.of.two]

Ich will get worse before it gets better. IMO only high heat - 86-88F - is needed for ich treatment. Stay away from the meds. The fin rot most likely was brought on by the stress of the ich. Keep a close eye on water conditions and keep up the water changes.
http://www.aquahobby.com/articles/e_ich2.php

 

[absolutangel04]

Oh I'm mrt555's gf btw lol, in case there was any confusion.
And I think I've spotted fin rot on a couple of my female guppies, will the kordon's Ich attack help treat that? Is the high temperature good or making it worse?

The heat and salt will help the fin rot in all likelihood.
Yeah, it does get worse before better, so the fact that you see more spots is a good sign in this case.
Thanks for clarifying that you changed your name. I probably would have missed that otherwise and been confused. Lol.

 

[KlcoKN]

Lol sorry, I think I made it more confusing, I'm mrt555's girlfriend, he didn't change his name
Our 10 gallon tanks filter is finally cycled, its been eating through 4ppm ammonia daily and have had zero nitrites for two or three days now...

Wish it would have been cycled when we got the plecos so we could have quarantined them!
So now the question is what to do with it?
I want cory cats, but until now wasn't sure if they would be ok with our substrate (black blasting sand) but the loaches don't seem to have any issue with their barbells...
If I did get them this week they would obviously be quarantined until we were sure they weren't sick, and we were sure the main tank was fully cured..
Or should I wait to get them until after the main tank is cured of all its problems in case we would need to treat a few of the fish with something stronger that the fry, shrimp, or loaches won't tolerate?

 

[absolutangel04]

Lol sorry, I think I made it more confusing, I'm mrt555's girlfriend, he didn't change his name
Our 10 gallon tanks filter is finally cycled, its been eating through 4ppm ammonia daily and have had zero nitrites for two or three days now...

Wish it would have been cycled when we got the plecos so we could have quarantined them!
So now the question is what to do with it?
I want cory cats, but until now wasn't sure if they would be ok with our substrate (black blasting sand) but the loaches don't seem to have any issue with their barbells...
If I did get them this week they would obviously be quarantined until we were sure they weren't sick, and we were sure the main tank was fully cured..
Or should I wait to get them until after the main tank is cured of all its problems in case we would need to treat a few of the fish with something stronger that the fry, shrimp, or loaches won't tolerate?

Yeah, I see that you said gf. Sorry I missed that part. I just skimmed right over it apparently. Anyways, thanks for clarifying.
If I was you, I would wait to get more fish until the main tank is cured. It should clear up pretty quickly, so you hopefully won't have to wait too long. But, I would keep the 10g empty during this issue in case you have to separate anybody for special treatment.
Corys will be fine with your substrate. Honestly, corys do fine on most standard aquarium gravel too. Issues with their barbels can arise as the result of poor water quality and I think that is often blamed on the substrate. Of course, if you have a particularly rough substrate I could see it being a potential issue, but blasting sand will be fine. I know other people who keep them on blasting sand without any issues.

 

[KlcoKN]

Lol darn, I was hoping you'd convince me to just go get them
Oh well, a week or two more won't hurt, they're just so darned cute wiggling their buts like puppies lol...
I had read a couple people say they had them with blasting sand no problem but so many warn about it with them I was worried, and I've read that about water quality too

 

[MRT555]

Ok, so anyone have any idea what this is on one of our guppy's tails? 2 white strings are attached to it's tail, where it attaches to the tail has caused some redness. There was some redness on him a couple days ago, but we saw no strings then.

 

[KlcoKN]

And now the strings are gone again, WTF?! they look much too small to be anchor worms, and they disappear after a couple of hours... Any ideas on what they could be?

 

[HeatherW]

i don't see the strings on the fin anymore, but maybe one just behind that top fin going from the tan to the black - on the upper part of his body. is that another string?
love these little guys - hope you figure it out

 

[MRT555]

i don't see the strings on the fin anymore, but maybe one just behind that top fin going from the tan to the black - on the upper part of his body. is that another string?
love these little guys - hope you figure it out

The Loach had 2 on it's top fin, they appear to be gone now. The above pic of the guppy the strings were comming off of the upper portion of the tail fin, those appear to be gone as well. Ich is just taking it's sweet time.

 

[absolutangel04]

I am a little baffled by the strings now. My best guess is that is some of other sort of similar parasitic worm, but thats because I don't know what else it could be. From the picture, it looks like the same thing as what was on the dorsal fin of the loach, does it look the same to you?
What is the temperature at? Its still at or above 86, right?

 

[MRT555]

I am a little baffled by the strings now. My best guess is that is some of other sort of similar parasitic worm, but thats because I don't know what else it could be. From the picture, it looks like the same thing as what was on the dorsal fin of the loach, does it look the same to you?
What is the temperature at? Its still at or above 86, right?

Yup, looks the same to me. I didn't see the red sore on my loach that the guppy has, but same looking strings. We have another guppy that may not make it we are prepping the QT and going to try to treat her separately. She floats up at the top not moving much, then sometimes she will swim down with the other fish for 5 secs, then just float straight up to the top again Seemed like we were making good progress treating them, but now not so sure

 

[absolutangel04]

How frustrating! Its really hard to treat simultaneous issues. Hopefully the ich treatments also help with the worm (or whatever it is) thing. I will keep an eye out to see if I can figure out what else those white stringy/wormy/whatever things rae if they aren't anchor worms. At first, I thought they were just young anchor worms, but I'm not sure anymore since you have seen more of them, but they are still small.

 

[MRT555]

This is her. It is hard to see in this pic, but right where her tail meets her body is white fuzz. Not sure if this is a fungus or what. This really sucks because I don't know what we are having to fight in addition to the ich, or how to...

 

[absolutangel04]

Do you know how long ago the guppy died? Dead fish tend to get fungus really quickly after death sometimes, so I wouldn't worry about that unless you see it on a living fish.

 

[MRT555]

She is still alive, barely...

 

[absolutangel04]

Sorry, I assumed she died after you posted the thing about her not doing well.
Anyways, yeah, a white fuzz does usually mean fungus. Are you still using the Kordon Ich Attack? I think that stuff is supposed to treat some fungus as well (at least, thats what I read about it in reviews).

 

[MRT555]

Yup. 88-89 degrees, salt, and Kordon's.

 

[absolutangel04]

OK. Well, like I said, the Kordon's should help with any fungus issues, so I don't think you should add anything else right now.
For now, I would just focus on the ich and hopefully the rest will be cleared up with the treatments being used.
Here is another option for worm-like things:
1. Scraped beef is put into a gauze sac and hung among plants and close to the gravel. Light should be switched off. The sac with Planaria that will gather on it in a few hours is removed from the aquarium (hold the net under the sac to prevent Planaria falling back into the aquarium) and put into boiling water. Repeat this for several evenings to ensure that young planaria that have hatched from eggs are eradicated. I got that from: Aquarium tropical fish disease diagnostics. Fish treatment. Sick fish, ill fish, cure fish. I don't think you have planaria, but since that treatment is so minimally invasive, you could give it a try for the heck of it.

 

[KlcoKN]

Unfortunately she passed away sometime over night
And to me it didn't look like fuzz or fungus right before her tail but more like her scales were missing... Which I know can happen with extreme ich but honestly she didn't seem to have ich much. A few days ago I noticed she did have some dull greying on her body that was spreading, and one sidel fin started turning opaque and getting ragged... And while examining her last night it looked like the fin rot had definitely spread to her tail as well. Could that be the cause of the missing scales? And is it linked to the dull grey that spread over her body? And could any of this be linked to those dissapearing fin strings?
Ugh I'm so frustrated and feeling helpless, If there's some medication that will help my guppies I could transfer them to the qt tank and medicate them, but I can't do that if I don't know whats wrong